


Not Today, Mr. Williams

by cantdutchthis



Series: Not Today, Mr. Williams [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Historical, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 13:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantdutchthis/pseuds/cantdutchthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canada gave the Netherlands freedom, and the Netherlands gave Canada flowers. Yet there is more to their relationship than what is seemingly a simple romance. Ever since the Second World War, it slowly built up into what today has become one of the most profuse displays of communal friendship in the global community. Through the rebuilding of the '50s, the social upheaval of the '60s, and so much more, that that today has finally come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Not Today, Mr. Williams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is May 5th, 1945, Liberation Day for the Netherlands. Yet what remains unmentioned is that this man waited since 1944 for liberation, and instead found himself starving and split right through the middle in one of the most contested battlegrounds of WWII.

Willem looked at this man who was his saviour. But he did not smile. Life had been hard, and the Allies had not helped. No, spring had come and so had liberation, but he did not join the processions of orange. He did not even smile. That said, he had never been a man who smiled often. The only wrinkles he had were those from frowning, because as he had said, life had been hard and would still be hard even with this boy in his backyard. Canada. Even with his chocolate bars and white bread and chewing gum and shiny rifles covered in German blood, Willem remembered German potatoes and endless immigrants and the boy soldiers who desperately fled Flanders. How much did it matter that he only remembered potatoes but hadn’t held any, simply weighing whether to eat the cat or eat the flower bulbs as everything froze around him? So no thanks were uttered. Canada pushed up his helmet, cleaned his glasses, and looked at him like a dog that expected its belly to be rubbed. Willem pushed up his limp hair, put his scarf right, and looked at him like he might look at a rock.

“I don’t recall your name,” he stated, as if he were indeed, talking to a rock.

“Matthew Williams.”

“Funny,” Willem said, with an expression that really did state otherwise, not out place at a funeral. “My name is Willem van der Berg.”

“I know.”

“Funny.”

His lips were pressed as thin as his patience.

“Don’t you remember?” the boy asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

“My memory isn’t large enough to hold the world, if you are asking whether I remembered the times I journeyed to your part of the New World. Of course, I published  
the first world atlas, but memory is precious.” _And you, apparently, were not worth it._

“Memory is fallible. Sometimes, great men forget the most important things.”

“I am not great.”

“Are the links between the past and present so weak, Willem?”

“Mr. Van der Berg,” Willem corrected him, eyes narrowing to mirror his mouth, hand reflexively going for his pouch of tobacco, but remembering that was long gone. “Even while you wear glasses, you’re blind.”

Around them was a spring landscape, but buttered in mud from soldiers’ boots, finally thawed great rivers, and a people inflated by hope, and hope alone, trudging forward. They moved slowly, remembering _hongertochten_ , journeys of hunger on an empty stomach. They remembered burying their copper cookware so that it would not be made into German ammunition, and they remembered their neighbours wearing yellow stars on trains and then their sons with yellow hair to board the same trains bound eastwards. They remembered roasting their dogs and fitting their bicycles with wood instead of rubber wheels because that had all gone to Germany too. They remembered so much that it slowed them down. Those links were slowly broken so that they would move quicker, and they did. They were weakened by the bearers, slaves breaking their chains as they pushed out the oppressor and welcomed the liberator. Willem looked back at Matthew, knowing he saw something pathetic. He turned around, scarf fluttering in the salty sea breeze that was always felt in the Netherlands. For a moment, Willem felt as though he were at the bow of a great wooden ship, the VOC warming his blood and thawing the ice that immobilised him. But then he saw the D-Day dunes and Allies and Arnhem and he felt so tired. 

“I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. But you’re here with an army, boy, and the only thing that carries meaning is that rifle by your side.”

Matthew slung it off of the shoulder and let it fall on the ground.

“What meaning does it carry now?”

“Giving up,” Willem said, mouth suddenly not quite so tight.

“Al would tell me surrender,” Matthew said, daring to take a step to his side. 

“Mr. Jones would tell you many things, and many lies.”

“And you?”

“I’m blunt. Like the sword that hangs over my fireplace.”

“Or you can call it direct.”

“Yes. You can do many things. I, on the other hand, can’t,” Willem muttered, still wishing for tobacco.

“Thankfully, the future is full of promise for us all.”

Willem then smiled, a dirty scathing smile exposing his coffee and tobacco-stained teeth, having fallen out plenty of times due to scurvy and slightly crooked. Then, a single, long finger was pointed east to Germany, calloused with white cuticles.

“You forget him. A lot more than Dutch bikes rest there, boy.”

“You call me a boy, but I’m a man.”

“You call me Willem, but I’m a country.”

“Shall I call you Holland then?”

“So many do," he responded in a tired voice, patience as destroyed as the Arnhem landscape.

Then Willem walked, scarf fluttering the breeze and the smile gone with it.

“Pick up that gun, boy. No need for it there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The winter of 1944 to 1945 is known as the Hongerwinter in Dutch, or Hunger Winter. Why? It is the only recorded case of starvation in a fully developed, industrialised country. The winter was harsh, and the Germans had already squeezed whatever materials they could from the occupied lands. Then, when the Rhine became a fierce battle between the Allies and Germans, one lasting for months, the Dutch found themselves without coals to heat their homes with and with little to no food. Twenty thousand died from the cold alone, and public memory is marked by the Dutch trekking over highways on wooden wheeled bicycles in the desperate search for food. They remember eating their pets and chopping every tree in sight (this is especially noticeable in certain Amsterdam neighbourhoods). When the Canadians and Americans came, they were overwhelmed with food and many died this way too. All in all, it was a bitter time for a country that had hopelessly waited for liberation only to be delayed for many months.


	2. But I Fear I Won't Have a Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At a world meeting, Matthew tries once more to conquer Willem. Yet he finds himself in the shadow of greater men with greater history, all but a wry smile and half-hearted promises to lure him out.

Willem van der Berg sent him flowers. The tulips he would have boiled into soup had it not been for him now bloomed in Canada. Unwillingly, he sent him people too, all abandoning their homeland for these forests and plains. It felt as if Matthew had been given a part of him, his culture blooming on this soil. But then again, so many little parts had he received that he felt like a puzzle instead of a picture. This was not the missing piece nor the last piece, but only one of many. Still, Matthew remembered the time the Dutch flag had flown here and the little princess that had been born here. This piece was important, as Willem reaffirmed the following year with another boatload of immigrants and tulips.

When a meeting was held in Amsterdam, Matthew saw a man whose hair was proudly slicked up and whose fingers deftly rolled his own cigarette.

“Want a _sjekkie_?” he asked, raising an eyebrow when he saw Matthew look. It made the scar on his forehead crinkle funnily.

“Sure.”

And after the thousands of flowers and people, he now received this. All for liberation. What an expensive thing. The shag was brown, the paper rather flimsy, and it was held together by saliva. It was rolled thinly, but then again, not all of them were rich just yet.

“How did you get that scar, Mr. Van der Berg?” Matthew asked as he lit it up, feeling awkward.

“Somebody cut me,” the man said drily, stating the obvious.

“Is that all there is to that story?”

“No. But it was a long time ago.”

“You can’t keep secrets forever. One day I’ll find out.”

“But not today, Mr. Williams,” Netherlands said, eyes glimmering. 

Then he turned to Germany, his old oppressor, eyes shining ever the brighter. What a greedy, greedy man. It was rumoured that he would do anything for profit, and so he traded with the one to blame for the dismal state he found himself in all because pride was never so important as a full treasury. How eagerly Germans drove to his borders for foodstuffs and more, and how eagerly these two men worked together, on the same page while Matthew lagged a chapter behind. Yes, his suit was of better quality and wasn’t paid for by American money, but they both stood taller and more confidently, so he cowered in his corner and wondered why he hadn’t taken Willem’s previous advice. Why hadn’t he picked up that gun?

Perhaps it was not too late to pick it up now. Matthew strode over to France, squaring his shoulders as if he needed to accentuate that he was far more muscular than these three men combined. Before, Ludwig had had shoulders so wide they could have functioned as a wall, but now he had shrunk into himself. Willem was maybe built more widely than Ludwig, and taller too, but still he lingered in his neighbor’s shadow as he had once lingered in that of both England and Prussia. Appearances were so deceptive, and Matthew now aimed to deceive.

In all likelihood, the two men did not notice him. That was what Matthew thought, but with a single eye did Willem watch him, still wondering how it came to be that the boy he had sailed away from had managed to drive away the man who stood in front of him.

“The times remain hard,” Willem remarked, as Ludwig’s eye was drawn to Matthew too.

“Not for them,” Ludwig bitterly replied, jaw more defined than ever.

“No, not for them. But when using Germany as a frame of reference, I’m afraid we are all soft.”

“This would be the moment where I cite verdicts and signed agreements, but such things are not necessary here.”

“No. They are just as meaningless as humans and flowers, and a gun on the ground,” Willem said, eyes crinkling wrily.

“Excuse me?”

“Why waste your breath on citations, Ludwig?”

“I don’t.”

“Neither do I, so I shan’t repeat myself.”

Ludwig chuckled, and Willem smirked. His eastern neighbour clapped him on the shoulder, grip not quite so tight.

“Some of us are so stupid that we do.”

Silently, Willem responded that Ludwig must be immensely stupid in that case. But he was more diplomatic than that, and smelled German marks in his pocket that he would snatch up as greedily as those free American dollars. Coffee remained rationed still, and war brooded in Indonesia. His economy would not cough as long as it lapped up that German syrup, among others.

“You eyed too much, and I still look the wrong way.”

“Do you listen to America when it comes to Indonesia? I thought -”

“No. But I fear I won’t have a choice. So I face West now.”

“Suriname?” Ludwig said, grateful that at least for Willem, West did not mean him.

“For the time being. But in Asia I am done.”

“And Guinea then?”

“Barely worth looking at. What a harsh reality, that what we hold has become worthless so quickly. I hate inflation.”

“I just hate defeat.”

“Do you hate yourself then?”

“No. But I fear I won’t have a choice. So I face forwards now.”

Both men smiled at each other. Some things simply did not perish by bullet holes and strangulation. Then they walked away, the meeting over. Matthew walked to Willem, voice almost catching in his throat.

“I did not want to interrupt earlier, Mr. Van der Berg, but I was wondering if you could perhaps show me Amsterdam. I don’t think I’ve ever properly visited,” he said meekly.

Willem did not even turn to face him, his pace so brisk it was hard to keep up with.

“Most would wait for an invitation.”

“You don’t extend those.”

“I do. Simply not to you,” Willem said bluntly without even sparing a glance.

“Which is why I do not wait.”

“I shall take you to the Rijksmuseum and then we can admire all the paintings that have perished in the Rape of Europa, hanging on empty walls and hooks. Or would you prefer the neighborhoods with baby trees, as the old ones were chopped to firewood in ’45?”

“If you are ashamed, then I will visit when I can admire your past,” Matthew muttered, feeling embarrassed.

“You plan to do this in the future?”

“You shall plan to do that in the future,” he now snapped, annoyed with the rudeness of the other. No wonder all Arthur could say was that he was grumpy and grim, yet blamed it all on those pesky Calvinistic tendencies to constantly speak one’s mind.

“Then don’t grow impatient, boy.”

Matthew watched his scarf stream behind him, and wished it would blow right off. What kind of a man rebuffed interest and kindness with insults? Yes, Matthew knew that for Europe, World War II had not ended just yet. They built and built and some still waged war, far away from home. Their people all emigrated, and they still had to wait in lines for what they needed. They could not afford to grow impatient when they already had lost their pride.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post-war Netherlands was still fraught by war, this time abroad. In modern Indonesia, then known as the Dutch Indies, the struggle for independence had culminated in a war. The Japanese occupation had uprooted the ancient Dutch administration, dating from the 17th century, and as the Dutch returned to reclaim their colony, they found fierce resistance. International opinion was that the Netherlands should grant it, especially on the part of the USA, but the belief was that the Netherlands would not be able to economically function without the Indies. Many things continued to be rationed (and would continue to be so until the '50s, such as coffee). For the Netherlands, the times remained harsh and as the old generation would put it, "there was nothing". Mass emigration to Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand was encouraged as there were no resources to feed and house a population that had grown exponentially with the expulsion of 'Dutch' people from the Indies, who had lived there for generations in many cases. However, Germans did massively trek to the Dutch border to buy Dutch diary products (butter is the most famous example), and this was highly illegal but continued anyhow, as the Dutch were always eager to earn.


End file.
